


Stitched Together

by Kayasurin



Series: Fathers and Sons [2]
Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Fatherly behavior, Gen, Knitting, One Shot, Slice of Life, Stream of Consciousness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-10
Updated: 2013-03-10
Packaged: 2017-12-04 20:15:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/714641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kayasurin/pseuds/Kayasurin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pre-story one-shot for Little Boy Blue.</p>
<p>Jack had to get Desmond's clothes somehow. He started out by making them. This is the first time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stitched Together

He finds the yarn in pieces and scraps, worn out sweaters and blankets with holes in them. He unravels them, winds the yarn into balls and tucks them away while he gathers more, and more. What he finds is never enough.

He makes the needles himself, out of a few sticks, some ice made sharp, some rocks broken into rough blades. (He thinks he remembers big hands, strong hands, teaching him how to shape the wood- but that might just be his imagination.)

(His father had been a carpenter, and his grandfather, and his great-grandfather. Jack had shown some skill, before the pond, before he fell, and rose again.)

The baby rabbit, Desmond, mostly sleeps. Wrapped up in his oversized blanket, he is protected from the chill carried by the winter spirit. Not much of a chill; enough to frost the grass even in summer, enough that the blackberry brambles that form their roof wear autumn colors year round.

The blanket isn't enough, though. Jack has to pick Desmond up to feed him. To give the baby the contact he so desperately craves. (The contact Jack craves just as much. Two and a half centuries and no one's touched him. No one's heard him. No one's looked at him.)

(Desmond sees him.)

When he thinks he has enough yarn, he begins to work. Casting on to the needles is an exercise in frustration. He doesn't remember how. He doesn't know if he ever knew.

But he tries again, and again. He throws the needles to the ground and vows to get rid of it all, but when he's done yelling he picks them back up and tries again.

His first successful row is ugly, and lumpy, and uneven. His second is just as bad. His third is a mess of dropped stitches and his clumsy attempts to right it.

His fourth is his attempt at pearling.

His fifth row he drops three stitches, and somehow picks them back up in the sixth.

By the seventh row, he realizes that what he's making is lopsided, uneven. He's been adding stitches as he goes, doesn't even know how that's happened.

By the eighth, he's figured out how to keep from adding more stitches.

By the tenth, he's gone through three different balls of yarn and is on the fourth, and needs to add the fifth.

By the twentieth, he can see just how horrible his efforts are, but there's a hand span's worth of knitting, filled with holes, lumpy and uneven as it is.

By the thirtieth, he's definitely improved.

By the three hundredth row, he has run out of yarn and figures out how to bind off the knitting so it won't unravel. It's an ugly creation, but he can't help but feel proud of his efforts. He did it, all by himself.

For Desmond.

Careful not to wake the baby, Jack tucks the mutilated scarf- big enough for an adult, big enough to act as a blanket for the baby- around Desmond's body. The rabbit snuffles, rubs his cheek against his blanket, and clutches the edge of the scarf with one paw.

In the east, the sun is rising.

It took Jack all night to learn how to knit. But the frustration is worth it. And now that he knows? His next efforts will be better.

(Somehow he thinks he's done this knitting thing before; it should have been harder.)

(Jack learnt to knit at his mother's knee, something to keep him quiet during the long, winter nights when the wind howled and only madmen went out of doors.)

(His first efforts go to his newborn sister, and newborn son, respectively.)

**Author's Note:**

> Title referring to knitting stitches. If you've ever tried pulling on a knit weave, you know how strong it is.
> 
> Prompted by DarkInuFan.


End file.
